Confessions of a grey-headed reporter

Freak

Way back when, an NBC guy named Edwin Newman produced an annual rhyme that summarized the year’s news. He’d read the rhyme on the Today show. Best we can recall, it was always clever and fun.

Brett Martin, the ex-WAGA and ex-WGCL morning guy, would probably be the first to say that he’s no Edwin Newman. But a twisted version of Newman’s spirit lives in (what’s apparently) a series of rhyming, hip-hop flavored news-summary pieces that Martin is now producing independently. Martin puts a lot of work into it. You may judge the results.

As a guy who produced the occasional Dr. Seuss-style rhyme for TV (usually over the fierce objections of producers), I have a certain admiration for Martin’s writing effort. He also has an unflinching willingness to make a fool of himself. If you’re into the Martin persona, the pieces are fun to watch. This is the second edition, produced in mid-February. It’s an improvement on the first one.

When he worked as WAGA’s Road Warrior, Martin had a ton of fans. Field crews constantly took questions from old people who watched Good Day Atlanta who wanted to know what “that Brett Martin” would do next. As if we knew. Martin is “between jobs” currently.

Martin’s videos haven’t gone viral. He has a Youtube channel, to which fans may subscribe. His method remains unclear, but the madness is unmistakable.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Related

About live apt fire

Doug Richards is a reporter at WXIA-TV. This is his personal blog. WXIA-TV has nothing whatsoever to do with this blog, under any circumstances, in any form. For anything written herein, Doug accepts sole credit and full blame. Follow him on Twitter: @richardsdoug. All rights reserved. Thanks for visiting.

Post navigation

7 thoughts on “Freak”

I thought he was generally a pretty unfunny dude when he did the Road Warrior segements, and while the Phelps rap was more of the same, the A-rod in bikini rap actually made me chuckle a coupla times. The end times are near….